


Thoughts Behind The Glass

by Origingirl



Category: Childhood's End (TV)
Genre: Like, Melancholy, POV First Person, Sad, but also respectable?, karellens POV, so very sad, very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 00:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12157938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origingirl/pseuds/Origingirl
Summary: I got a spontaneous burst of comments on my other Childhood's End fic, so I thought "You know what? I gotta get something down before I go to bed tonight." And thus, this was born! :D---Karellen's thoughts on Ricky, his race, and his own unanswered questions as he departs our solar system.





	Thoughts Behind The Glass

He was so... _quaint_. I can't really think of another word to describe him. Another _human_ word that is.

He was a complete wreck of emotions the first time I had laid my eyes on him - his own eyes darting back and forth across the reflective glass, searching and searching, but never _finding_. Never being able to satisfy his human curiosity.

I find this heightened level of curiosity to be unique among his race. Of all the other planets I've supervised in my time alive, no matter if they were _as_ advanced as human beings or even _more_ advanced in technological assets, not one hosted a race as hungry for answers as human beings.

They're quite the _delicate_ little things if I'm being honest. Of course, we ourselves are by no definition of the word _immortal_ , but Ricky's species has such _soft_ flesh - able to be penetrated with even the _dullest_ needlepoint. It's a wonder they've been able to exist for as long as they have. I do not admire them for this, however. Even _if_ they're able to persist without extra biological protection, it is simply the drive that all life experiences. The drive that is, in fact, the very reason life exists at all in this vast void that we call the universe - a will to survive. They aren't wrong when they say "life will find a way", and neither is Ricky when he quotes this phrase when referring to the less-than-optimal state of his crops.

No matter, I suppose. 

The stars aren't meant for man.

Such _quaint_ beings. Believing that just because they've discovered planets _far_ from their reach with their telescopes that they're meant - no - _destined_ to inhabit them in the future. They aren't wrong in believing there is other life in this universe as well, clearly. I've made as much information available. They are _not_ , however, destined to reach for those planets, or even so much as the nearest star. I may not admire this race, but I do _envy_ it. Their children can go where we can never follow.

I rarely have the luxury to dwell on self-indulgent thoughts, but even I can't help but wonder what the overmind _truly_ is. Is it alive? Is it by _any meaning of the word_ a _living being_? Or is it simply an entity existing for the sole purpose to cycle consciousness throughout the universe? Would there be as much life if it weren't for the Overmind? Is the Overmind like a black hole - sucking, inhaling, drinking, stating itself until there will be no potential left? I've learned to give up on seeking answers along time ago - not just to these questions, but also to any others I had pertaining to the _vast beyond_.

Ricky and his kind, on the other end of the spectrum, will _never_ stop pondering, and at the same time will _never_ have _all_ their questions answered. Why do they rattle themselves like this? Why do they keep asking the same questions about space even though they _know_ those questions will never be answered? I must admit, in the context of my conversations with Ricky, I had all the answers for him. I could have satisfied that yearning, _aching_ feeling in his mind that _hungers_ for knowledge. I could have fed him all the information he'd ever need to know about this black, velvet nothingness that his little blue marble floats in. I could have answered all his questions so he wouldn't have been left to wonder like I once had. 

But I didn't.

I didn't because it wasn't _practical_ of me to do so. He would not live to see the end of his world, thus there was no need to explain to him _truly_ why we were here.

I didn't...

...at first,

I _shouldn't_ have.

But I did eventually.

Why?

I told him the last time he was flown up to meet with me that I considered him a friend. However, the very _word_ **_friend_** is a _human_ language term, and did not relay to Ricky fully the meaning behind my statement, rather I only used the word because in _his_ language it was the only word that came to as close of a resemblance of what I considered him.

Him.

The "chosen one". The "blue collar prophet", as his people like to call him.

The one whose mind never ceased to buzz with sublime curiosity. The one who, though may not have been all too pleased with me during stage one of supervision, spoke to me with awe radiating in his voice and eyes every time we engaged in conversation between a glass wall. The one who I not only considered a friend but a respectable companion and a brave lifeform. The one who, for the first time in a long time, made a light chuckle escape from my vocal chords when he showed me the political cartoon of all my possible appearances against the glass wall, my favorite being the centipede.

It was interesting to see him up front and close for the first time - a human, that is - rather than gazing down at their race from my ship in the atmosphere. A part of me wanted to remove the glass just to see the unique expressions and emotions that only humans were capable of conveying. 

It was he who I thought of as the notes carried throughout the high ceilings of my ship and the invisible rotation rings of this solar system.

_"How **terribly, terribly** quaint."_ I remember saying to myself as I stared at the ships steering module.

_"Onto the next."_


End file.
